Touch
by Anniebear91
Summary: An exploration of Ryou's feelings and how they affect his love for Bakura. Oneshot. Hinted tendreshipping.


Touch. It's just one little word, yet it means everything. It can mean so many things, so many different, varying things. Touch, it could be the first time you hold a new born child, to touch it's skin, that moment of pride. It could be the soft hug before a long goodbye. It can be the first embrace of a hello from a friend. Touch could be that first time your hand sweeps by that of your lovers, gently brushing against each other, before your finger entwine. That special moment when your lips brush together with a first kiss, hands stroking delicate hair, finger tips soothing heated skin. Touch can be the emotion, when you receive something special, or when you're told something that makes your heart swell. It can be the tight hang clasp for safety, or the gently stroke of the final farewell on your death bed. Yes, touch can be so many things, however none of these things apply to me.

No.

To me, touch is different. Touch is pain. That longing, that horrible lustful longing for something more that well never be. The feeling that no matter how much I endure, I will never receive what I want. Touch is the quickened pace of my heart when the first bruise forms. The heightened rate of my breath and the knife slides through my skin. Touch is the gently pulsing of my veins, pumping blood through open wounds, that my body desperately tries to heal, no matter how much the damage.

Yes.

Touch is many things to many people, and to me, to touch, is to cause pain.

I can ponder for hours on what the word means. I can sit and research, review and analyse, but the outcome is always the same. Touch is to each individual. Touch is often associated with love.

Love.

My other enemy. Like touch, love has so many meanings. The love for objects, cars or shoes or material goods. The love for games, a hobby of which most of my friends possess. Love for the family and friends. Or love-hate, the feeling of joy from hating someone. Again, my sense of love is different. It's twisted and warped and wrong. I love myself, though I am not a narcissist. My reflection changes in the mirror, to reveal another me, a darker me. It reveals a strength within me that tears at my heart. It causes my skin to burn with longing. I am in love with myself. But not myself as other know it. No, I am different. I have a yami. I live with the darkness within myself. Not just an alterego, but another person. A completely separate entity that lives within me. We can communicate, though I am not insane. I love him, although I know he does not feel the same. I often wonder if he feels at all. If he feels my burning desire to touch him, to feel my hands in his hair. Would that even be possible? Would it feel like my own hair? No. It isn't possible. His hair is matted and long, and his eyes burn red. My hair is soft and delicate, and my eyes are a clouded brown. We're the same, yet so very different. That's what attracts me to him.

The difference.

I'm calm, relaxed, always ready to have fun. Though I'm often shy and polite. It's hardly a shock after the way my life turned out. All of my friends fell into comas. I am cursed. I lose everyone I love. Even Amane. Amane left me. I don't blame her. It was an accident, but I was still alone, so very alone. No amount of letters will ever reach her, no screams nor cries, for she is gone. And she won't come back. To lose someone is the worst feeling. That horrible emptiness that screams at you, that rushes through your stomach with every thought, every antagonising painful thought. Every single memory and every photograph. That feeling that no matter what you do, you will never see their smile again. You will never hear their voice or touch their skin. You will never hear their laugh or share a secret. Because they're gone. And you will sit for hours and hours, contemplating what you could have done. How you could have changed things to stop it happening. You can list the things you could have said, things you wish you had said, but it's no use. It's too late. It's all over. There is nothing you can do to change the past…nothing.

He's from the past. 5000 years ago. From Egypt. His skin is tanned, much darker than my own which resembles porcelain. His eyes are wild with thought, the contemplations of his next acts. He's devious, loud and brash. He isn't polite or caring. He doesn't care much for anyone or anything other than himself. He's fuelled by revenge, and pent up on getting that. His anger knows no bounds and his temper is nothing short of fiery. Too many times I have been on the wrong side of the anger, and too many times I have felt the pain. Every single cut, and bruise and broken bone. Every single burn or rip, every single tear that fell down my cheek. Everything always comes back to me. Whether I'm alone in bed at night, or I'm at school in class. In the shower, or watching TV, driving or walking. It's there. The memories are there, haunting me.

So why do I do it?

Why do I love him? Why do I let him abuse me? Why do I let him beat me, destroy me? It's not just the physical pain, it's also mental. The names, the weakness. The feeling of never been more than a host to him. The fact that it's true and no matter what I do, it will always be that way. I am a body and that is all. A channel for his spirit. To him, I do not exist. Not as a person, but as a corpse.

Corpse.

That's how I'm treated. How I act. I don't talk back or defend myself. I'll willingly take on the abuse, the hatred. I will willing sit and be sliced, yelled at, battered and bruised. And I won't complain. No. I will sit there, take rasping breaths as the pain burns at my eyes, as salted waters well up but never fall. I will sit there and feel my yami destroy me. Destroy my hopes and dreams, destroy my life and light. And I will not complain. I will not shout back or defend myself.

Maybe I am insane? Maybe I am crazy. It almost makes me smile. I have someone living inside me. I talk to them, I let them abuse me, drive me to the brink of suicide. Yet I won't stop him. I won't end my own torture. I won't take anything for the depression or schizophrenia as they call it. Because I know it doesn't exist. I know that it isn't real, that it isn't inside my head. I know that no amount of medical knowledge will suppress him, and nor do I want it to. I don't believe in tablets. I don't believe in changing a person's mental condition because they are different.

Different.

Who decides what's different anyway? Why does being different make someone wrong? Who decides this? I hear voices so I must be crazy. Maybe it's crazy not to hear voice, not to be pressured by life to the brink of destruction. The norm doesn't make it right. I can be wired up totally different to everyone else, my systems crossed or whatever they say, but I'm different, so I must be wrong. How is that so? Who can prove that I am wrong? What if the norm is wrong? What if the medication to make me normal is killing the details that make me human?

Human.

What is that? What separates humans from animals? Are we smarter? Position ourselves above others? Are we civil? No. No we are not civil. We kill everything. We kill each other over old rules and religions, the laws of which have faded. Is it our compassion and love? Those things he does not feel. But he is not human. He has no body or form, which died long ago. He is a spirit.

A ghost.

He wanders, almost in limbo, unable to die due to his thirst for revenge. An act he uses my body to carry out. Does this make him human? The grudging feeling against someone who also died long ago? Is this his only emotion? His only pleasure?

Does this mean that no matter what I do, no matter what I say or endure I will never be able to express my love? That he will never share the emotions I have, that I will never feel happy and safe. Isn't that how love is meant to make you feel?

Is it? Am I supposed to feel happy, like I'm flying. Tingles on my skin with every single touch and my heart should melt when we talk? It doesn't feel that way. No. It hurts. It burns at my heart and my blood turns to ice, my eyes sting with fire and my throat closes up. But, I like it. I like the feeling of lust, the feeling of pain and longing. The thought that I can want something, that I have the power to want something I can never have.

Does that make me a masochist? Or just foolish?

Is it wrong to long for something you can never have? To long for the touch of someone you will never feel? To torment yourself with the teases and traits of every conversation, praying that something will spark, praying that it will make everything fall into place, that one day, maybe, it will all work out. That you will finally be happy, that you will have finally achieved your goal. To enjoy the shattering, heart-stopping sickness when you crash back down into a bitter reality to realise that it is not so. That it will never happen, and there is nothing you can do. You will never have that luxury for you are undeserving.

Undeserving.

Undeserving of all love and attention. Of friendship, emotion and the air you breathe. To be undeserving of everything you have, to be ungrateful for the attention you receive. That's what he tells me. Every day. That I should be thankful for what I am, for what I get, as I am undeserving. That I do not deserve the life I possess and I'm lucky that he lets me keep it. Maybe that's his way of showing he cares. By letting me live. Maybe I should be thankful for every cut, rip and tear, and every single stab to my confidence. After all, they are all from him, and he spends little time on anything else other than revenge. Maybe it is his way of telling me he loves me, maybe I have always been wrong. I can endure the suffering and all of the pain, I can endure everything that life throws at me, and I can endure it alone, because I have him.

And I love him.

oOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

_Hey!_

_I haven't wrote tendershipping in a while. It was originally going to be a puppyshipping fic but the depressingness screamed Ryou. It wasn't too bad was it? Sorry nothing happened but I really felt like doing something emotional, so I hope it was. Haha. So, anyway, I have to get back to the puppyshipping fics before work, haha. I hope that you enjoyed it,_

_Please R&R_

_Much love_

_AB_

_x_


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